In an obnoxious question to MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough
during NBC's prime time Super Tuesday special coverage, Nightly News anchor Brian
Williams mocked the GOP as he pondered: "Who woke up in the
Republican Party one day recently and said, 'I know what let's go after,
let's go after reproductive rights in the United States'? What was that
about?"

Later,
Williams teed up correspondent Savannah Guthrie on the topic: "How much
gender gap repair do you think the GOP nominee is going to be faced
with?" Guthrie replied: "There's no question that there's been some damage done with all the focus on contraception.
The comments from Rush Limbaugh certainly didn't help, because the way
Rush Limbaugh talked about this issue was not "it's a issue of religious
liberty," but rather, "it's an issue about sex," which is not something
that Republicans necessarily are on the strongest ground on."

Earlier in the coverage, Guthrie lamented how "There have been a lot of
distractions in the Republican primary because of the strength of
social conservatives..."

Tuesday was not the first time Williams pleaded ignorance[1]
on the origin of the contraception debate. On the February 23 Nightly
News, he declared: "Birth control seems to have become, as one headline
writer put it today, 'The Third Rail of American Politics Right Now,'
and this happened really out of nowhere."

Of course, Williams knows very well the Obama administration made it an
issue with its decision to attempt to force religious institutions to
pay for birth control in their health insurance plans.

Here are portions of the March 6 coverage:

10:20PM ET

(...)

BRIAN WILLIAMS: And yet, Savannah, parties are resilient. Everyone says
this is doing such damage to the Republican brand name. People so
quickly forget the Democrats went at it till June. People thought they'd
be bloodied to a pulp, could never win in a general.

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Yeah, well, a couple points on that. First of all, in
the Democratic primary, which we all know was hard-fought, the
Democrats in that scenario didn't exactly run to the left flank of their
party. So they didn't perhaps do as much damage with independents.

As we are seeing Romney has done, if you compare him to McCain, where
he was at this point in 2008. Frankly, any of his recent predecessors,
he's got higher negatives than any of them. The other problem for Romney
is, if he can't close this sale, he can't pivot to that general
election message. He can't make the argument that perhaps is his most
effective against President Obama, getting out there and prosecuting
this argument on the economy every single day.

There have been a lot of distractions in the Republican primary because
of the strength of social conservatives, who are demanding certain
other features of their candidates. That's where some of the fights have
been. And whenever Romney's on that turf, he's not on his strengths.
And that's been a problem for him.

(...)

10:38PM

WILLIAMS: Our family has grown by two members. You know them both.
Former congressman from Florida, the veteran Republican – who was that
we were just hearing? Someone talking – Joe Scarborough. He of Morning
Joe fame. Welcome.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's great to be here.

WILLIAMS: Andrea Mitchell's here as well.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Great to be with you.

WILLIAMS: This is a setup, because I heard you out on this topic. Who
woke up in the Republican Party one day recently and said, "I know what
let's go after, let's go after reproductive rights...

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, no doubt about it.

WILLIAMS: ...in the United States"?

SCARBOROUGH: Let us debate-

WILLIAMS: What was that about?

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. Let us debate 1965 cases, Griswold v. Connecticut.
It's caused a real problem. And it looked like, for a while, that Rick
Santorum was doing everything he could do to hand the advantage back to
Mitt Romney, the presumptive front-runner.

(...)

10:57PM

WILLIAMS: And Savannah Guthrie, how much gender gap repair do you think the GOP nominee is going to be faced with?

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Well, I think that's something we just talked about
with Joe. There's no question that there's been some damage done with
all the focus on contraception. The comments from Rush Limbaugh
certainly didn't help, because the way Rush Limbaugh talked about this
issue was not "it's a issue of religious liberty," but rather, "it's an
issue about sex," which is not something that Republicans necessarily
are on the strongest ground on.

(...)

-- Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. Click here[2] to follow Kyle Drennen on Twitter.

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